"Little round planet in a big universe,
Sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed.
Depends on what you look at, obviously...
But even more it depends on the way that you see."
- Bruce Cockburn
"Child Of The Wind"
After nearly fifty-two years of life, I have finally begun to figure out that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Or perhaps more accurately...the ability to perceive beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty certainly does exist in the universe...or, more accurately, there are orders in the natural world that create something that the human being perceives as beautiful.
But, what the human sees is not as important as how the human sees. What is the mindset behind the observation?
For years, I have tended towards seeing ugliness and horror in the natural world. And certainly, it is there; a brutal, nonpersonal reality permeates our existence...sunsets from an airplane are breathtaking, but you just cannot open the door without other realities of the natural world killing you dead. And horribly. Fire is mesmerizing...it is also unpersonal, and it kills. Horribly. Beautiful people molest children. Beautiful frogs have skin that produces deadly toxin.
Beauty does not have a morality. And it took me getting rid of God to discover and embrace that reality. I had to see both beauty and horror as amoral realities - in the natural world. My mind simply could not embrace the existence of a good God who had created overwhelming beauty...that could kill you. Others could...through simplistic faith. But I am not wired that way, and it stretched me so thin that I nearly popped.
So - I cast off God, and everything came into focus. I saw beauty all around me...I was floating in it...and I did not have to classify it or justify it as good or bad or right or wrong. It just was. So was horror and heartbreak and tragedy and suffering. But I saw them both - and did not blame God for either one, because God was no longer a factor in my thinking.
I am glad I set myself free from that prison. I am also glad that I let poor old God off that hook. I have yet to figure out what the God thing is all about...and I gladly accept that I probably never will. Mystery is enough without my placing my well thought out doctrine on top of it.
But beauty...somehow, I have found it. God or no God, I am still floating in beauty. Occassionally, I feel something like gratitude towards - ?? Mystery! I know it sounds weird, but I am grateful to me...for allowing myself to see beauty, to recognize that along with horror and wrongness, there is something else. The more I let myself see it, the more I see it. And the more I see it, the more I let myself see it.
And I float in beauty. Understanding nothing, but not really needing to.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be---
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.
The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be---
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.
They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?
Friday, April 24, 2009
Distance Haze - Haunted By God
After sporadically keeping another blog for a couple of years, I am creating a new one here at "Distance Haze." My other blog, "Brother Crow", chronicled my journey away from religion and gave me a place to dump my anger, confusion and occasional rants and raves against society, politics and religion.
That whole time, I realized that something was still aching in my soul. Try as I might, I could not escape a daily internal reality - I was an atheist who still believes in God. I do not like Him, I do not believe in Him (I know, contradiction - first time its ever occurred in the human race, huh?), I will not worship Him, and I certainly will not forgive Him...but I am haunted by Him, and I must process this central core dysfunction of my life so that I can continue to move forward in the living of what I have left.
My dear friend, who I will refer to often as Mylon (because that's his name...really) tells me that I am a deist. I studied deism in seminary, and I think he is probably right...I would say I am a "neo-deist." Kind of like "nudist" - which is apropos, because nakedness is a state of being which implies full vulnerability, intimacy and desire. It is Garden of Eden stuff...the way we were before we became enemies of God. If that ever happened.
I don't know...and that is why I am writing "Distance Haze." I hope to invite others to write on it, too. I want this blog to become something like a forum, a movement. Why? Because I believe (a belief that is stronger than my belief in God) that there are millions of people out there - former Christians (like myself), anxious atheists (like myself), awkward agnostics (like myself) and they want or need a community - even a virtual community - to admit that God haunts them. To admit and discuss why they can't shake the God-thought, and why their souls hunger for the Mystery. They KNOW they will not go to church, or join an organized religion, or quit drinking or smoking or listening to Devil Music. They aren't Republican (which, by the way, appears to have become the number one requirement for becoming a Christian).
They are haunted - by God on the one hand, and by Distance Haze on the other. What is "Distance Haze." Well, it is a term I heard alot when I lived up in Ohio and would visit little towns on the shores of Lake Erie. Thermal inversion layers would form over the shorelines, making the sky very soupy, even on clear days. So, you could rarely see more than a couple of miles clearly, and then distance haze would kick in, and the further you looked, the soupier things became. You have noticed this at the beach, I'm sure. Clear sky, nice breeze from the ocean, but down there, as the beach curves outward in the distance, things become foggy, fuzzy, unfocused, uncertain. Hazy.
Same with this God thing - He is Distant. Regardless of what Christians, or any other religious devotees say...He is God. A personal relationship with Him is a delusion - isn't it? How can we know anything about GOD? Except what religion tells us, or the training of our culture, or ... our hearts? And don't our hearts tell us lots of things, and many of those things are absolutely not true??
Distance Haze. I cannot see God clearly. I cannot know Him well. Or at all. But, I cannot escape the feeling that he is out there, he is something. I can't squirm my way around it...I have to deal with it head on.
So, Distance Haze is where I will do that. I hope you will join me. Maybe, squinting together, we can make out something that we both will say - "what the hell is that???"
That whole time, I realized that something was still aching in my soul. Try as I might, I could not escape a daily internal reality - I was an atheist who still believes in God. I do not like Him, I do not believe in Him (I know, contradiction - first time its ever occurred in the human race, huh?), I will not worship Him, and I certainly will not forgive Him...but I am haunted by Him, and I must process this central core dysfunction of my life so that I can continue to move forward in the living of what I have left.
My dear friend, who I will refer to often as Mylon (because that's his name...really) tells me that I am a deist. I studied deism in seminary, and I think he is probably right...I would say I am a "neo-deist." Kind of like "nudist" - which is apropos, because nakedness is a state of being which implies full vulnerability, intimacy and desire. It is Garden of Eden stuff...the way we were before we became enemies of God. If that ever happened.
I don't know...and that is why I am writing "Distance Haze." I hope to invite others to write on it, too. I want this blog to become something like a forum, a movement. Why? Because I believe (a belief that is stronger than my belief in God) that there are millions of people out there - former Christians (like myself), anxious atheists (like myself), awkward agnostics (like myself) and they want or need a community - even a virtual community - to admit that God haunts them. To admit and discuss why they can't shake the God-thought, and why their souls hunger for the Mystery. They KNOW they will not go to church, or join an organized religion, or quit drinking or smoking or listening to Devil Music. They aren't Republican (which, by the way, appears to have become the number one requirement for becoming a Christian).
They are haunted - by God on the one hand, and by Distance Haze on the other. What is "Distance Haze." Well, it is a term I heard alot when I lived up in Ohio and would visit little towns on the shores of Lake Erie. Thermal inversion layers would form over the shorelines, making the sky very soupy, even on clear days. So, you could rarely see more than a couple of miles clearly, and then distance haze would kick in, and the further you looked, the soupier things became. You have noticed this at the beach, I'm sure. Clear sky, nice breeze from the ocean, but down there, as the beach curves outward in the distance, things become foggy, fuzzy, unfocused, uncertain. Hazy.
Same with this God thing - He is Distant. Regardless of what Christians, or any other religious devotees say...He is God. A personal relationship with Him is a delusion - isn't it? How can we know anything about GOD? Except what religion tells us, or the training of our culture, or ... our hearts? And don't our hearts tell us lots of things, and many of those things are absolutely not true??
Distance Haze. I cannot see God clearly. I cannot know Him well. Or at all. But, I cannot escape the feeling that he is out there, he is something. I can't squirm my way around it...I have to deal with it head on.
So, Distance Haze is where I will do that. I hope you will join me. Maybe, squinting together, we can make out something that we both will say - "what the hell is that???"
seven miles away
the horizon frames the sky;
that assumes there are no hills or trees,
or clouds to mar the clarity of sight –
a bad assumption on this earth,
filled as it is with weather, dirt and life.
seven miles away…
a nothingspace, a flicker and a breath,
the measure of the gap between a birth and death.
that is on the best of days – come humidity or cloud,
when vapor draws around us like a shroud,
and that horizon rushes in,
like dust thrown up before a wind,
it slaps us even as we gaze,
the squinting victims of distance haze.
then the thickening of night,
when distance haze reduces sight
to just beyond the nose, at best…
yet that is when we fools think we are blest -
we cannot see, and so forget.
the horizon frames the sky;
that assumes there are no hills or trees,
or clouds to mar the clarity of sight –
a bad assumption on this earth,
filled as it is with weather, dirt and life.
seven miles away…
a nothingspace, a flicker and a breath,
the measure of the gap between a birth and death.
that is on the best of days – come humidity or cloud,
when vapor draws around us like a shroud,
and that horizon rushes in,
like dust thrown up before a wind,
it slaps us even as we gaze,
the squinting victims of distance haze.
then the thickening of night,
when distance haze reduces sight
to just beyond the nose, at best…
yet that is when we fools think we are blest -
we cannot see, and so forget.
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